Alison Frankel

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When John Bellinger of Arnold & Porter was the legal adviser to the State Department in the administration of George W. Bush, the Justice Department filed about a dozen amicus briefs addressing the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 law that has become a modern vehicle for international human rights litigation. Bellinger told me on Thursday that he signed every one. When foreign nationals use the ATS to bring cases in U.S. courts for conduct that took place overseas, foreign policy is implicated, and the State Department wants a voice. That’s why Bellinger believes it’s so significant that when the Justice Department filed its new amicus brief in the reformulated Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum case at the U.S. Supreme Court, State Department legal adviser Harold Koh did not sign it.

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Has there ever been a price-fixing case in which the alleged conspirators agreed to take less money for their product and simultaneously up their production and boost competition? The answer to that question may determine the success of the Justice Department‘s e-books antitrust suit against Apple and the two publishers that have not agreed to settle DOJ’s civil charges.

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The newly-filed Justice Department complaint against Apple and five major publishers is an incalculable boon to Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, the firms that won the intense competition to lead the multidistrict e-books antitrust class action. There hasn’t yet been discovery in the class action, which the defendants have moved to dismiss or send to arbitration, so the specific details in the Antitrust Division’s complaint, including emails and meetings between Apple and publishing executives, are powerful evidence of the conspiracy the class action alleges. The Justice Deparment’s same-day settlement with Hachette Books, Simon & Shuster, and Harper Collins also increases the likelihood that those publishers will also move to resolve the class action and improves the class’s case against Apple and the remaining publishers, Macmillan and Penguin.

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Distressed debt investors don’t have much credence as victims. These are, after all, hedge funds that buy up bonds in or near default, typically at a steep discount, in the hope they’ll be able to boost the value of the debt through the bankruptcy process or litigation in U.S. courts. Right now, for instance, distressed bond funds are preparing for battle over billions of dollars worth of Greek sovereign debt that they snatched up in anticipation of that country’s default in March. Distressed debt funds quite literally feed off the flesh of moribund companies and foreign economies, which is why they’re frequently called vulture funds. Vultures flanked by crafty lawyers aren’t entitled to a whole lot of sympathy.

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Remember the Cold War military doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction? The idea was that if the United States and the Soviet Union both knew the enemy had enough weapons to wipe the entire country off the map, neither would actually use those weapons. Mutually Assured Destruction got the entire world through the age of fallout shelters and Barry Goldwater. So the doctrine should be powerful enough to get Google, Apple and Microsoft past Justice Department antitrust regulators.

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Alison Frankel updates On the Case multiple times throughout the day on WestlawNext Practitioner Insights. A founding editor of the Litigation Daily, she has covered big-ticket litigation for more than 20 years. Frankel’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The American Lawyer and several other national publications. She is also the author of Double Eagle: The Epic Story of the World’s Most Valuable Coin.